Perspective: Colleges must fix graduates' professionalism gap

I gave an exam last week, and one student showed up 25 minutes late. When the hour ended and I collected the papers, he looked up from his seat, cast a pitiable glance and mumbled, “Please, I got here late — may I have another 20 minutes?”

I shook my head and said, “Can’t do that.” His request echoed in my head all the way back to my office. Where in the world did he get the idea that an exam doesn’t begin and end at a set time?

Employers call it an “employability skill” - work ethic, timeliness, attendance and so on - and they deal with it every day. Whenever the National Association of Manufacturers administers its “Skills Gap” surveys to members, failings in this area are as likely to be cited as complaints about inadequate technical and verbal skills.

In 2001 and 2005, the association’s members rated employability skills as a crushing deficiency in their workforce, and more respondents urged schools to instill better behavior than did those who demanded more training in reading and math.

Even after the 2008 financial crisis, poor conduct remains a top complaint. In the 2011 survey, 40 percent of employers cited “inadequate basic employability skills” as a reason for why they can’t hire and keep workers.

Employability skills aren’t only a blue-collar failing, as shown by the “Professionalism in the Workplace” survey from York College of Pennsylvania released earlier this year. The college’s project asked 401 human-resource people about the professionalism of recent college graduates.

Forty-nine percent of them stated that less than half of new employees “exhibit professionalism in their first year.” More than half (53 percent) have noticed “a sense of entitlement” rising among younger workers; almost 45 percent have seen a “worsening of the work ethic,” including “too casual of an attitude toward work” and “not understanding what hard work is.”

Younger workers believe they can multitask and remain productive, the human-resources people told the York researchers. Thirty-eight percent of respondents blamed multitasking for the lack of “focus” among younger workers. The authors of the study explained that the younger generation “believes that it is possible to multi-task effectively” and that using social media, for example, is an efficient way to communicate. In interviews, the applicants check their phones for texts and calls, dress inappropriately and overrate their talents.

“The sad fact is some of these persons probably do not understand what is wrong with this,” the authors note.

Older workers have always complained about younger workers, of course, but there’s a difference: This time they attribute the youthful flaws not to ignorance or waywardness, but to a “sense of entitlement.”

We might forgive 18-year-olds fresh out of high school for lacking employability skills (the manufacturing sector hires many workers lacking undergraduate degrees). But when he or she reaches 23 and has four years of college, employers expect a white-collar worker to recognize basic norms of dress and deportment.

What happened in college, then? The survey by York College’s Center for Professional Excellence assigns colleges part of the blame, observing that letting students miss deadlines without penalty and assigning good grades for middling work only make them form the wrong expectations.

Yet, it turns out, professors don’t coddle students and overlook youthful flaws. Another survey by York College finds that professors think the same thing as employers do. It’s the 2012 “Professionalism on Campus” survey, a questionnaire about juniors and seniors answered by 415 college and university faculty members.

Professors generally agreed that professionalism includes attentiveness, punctuality and a work ethic, and 37 percent think it has declined over the past five years, while only 12 percent see an improvement.

Even more than employers, fully 64 percent of professors observe an increase in a sense of entitlement in recent years, while only 5 percent say it has decreased. The students text- message during class, send emails to teachers with grammar and spelling errors, and act “unfocused.” (For the “unfocused” part, the researchers said they started hearing comments a few years ago from employers about workers lacking “focus,” so they included a direct item in the questionnaire on it.) Faculty members identify parents as the main cause, though American culture in general and grade inflation in high school also receive blame.

Let’s agree that everyone is at fault, more or less. The burden falls heaviest on the workplace. High-school teachers have few direct incentives to toughen up their classrooms. The steady drag of uninterested students and school bureaucracy beats them down to the point where using higher grades and lax discipline are the easiest ways to make it through the week.

College professors, too, have no direct incentive to raise the bar on behavior, given the influence of student ratings of their performance and pressure from administrators and parents. Most of all, poor behavior by students doesn’t immediately threaten the livelihood of teachers.

A bad worker, however, jeopardizes a whole unit’s productivity, and a manager can’t simply pass a low performer to the next level. Teachers who allow delinquent students to slide merely compromise their own integrity. Dereliction in the workplace puts profits at risk.

This, then, is the real transition into adulthood in the U.S. today - not graduating from high school, leaving home or learning how to succeed in college, but performing full-time work for bosses who can’t compromise, and all too often must say, “Your work isn’t up to par, you’re not as great as you think, and if you don’t improve, you’re fired.”

As employers and government officials put more pressure on colleges to produce employable graduates, this message should reach students before they collect their diploma.

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Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University and the author of “The Dumbest Generation.”

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of this article can KMA ! This sort of attitude among some of the professors when I went to college led to more than one heated discussion. While attending I was getting up at 3.30 am and driving 35 miles to work the 5 to 3 shift and as much OT as they would let us work, then driving another 40 miles to attend classes from approx 6 to 9. and another 25 mile drive home. Every day for months I drove this triangle on 4 or 5 hours sleep. Sometimes I would even doze off during the monotonous lectures, occasionally I was late. One ret. Navy instructor thought he would go off on me for being ten min late. I made it clear in front of the whole class, that it was our class and not his. That WE were paying for the class and he worked for us.

At another college I signed up for 21 credit hrs one summer semester, they thought I was nuts, I had to get special permission to do it, I spent that summer driving an equally exhausting triangle between NSB, Daytona, and Deland. I finished 18 of them one class I had to drop because I couldn't keep up.

Real Life doesn't begin and end at a set time, it throws all manner of curve balls at you. this writer didn't bother to inquire of his student as to why he was late, whether or not he was a good student, or that he made any inquiry as to his Real Life. The students pay for these classes, its their class not yours, if you have to go a little bit out of your way to do the job then too bad. Its no different than having to deal with the setbacks of any other job.

OM, I have done the same thing when I went to school. That is; the job, the commute, the time constraints and the ever changing requirements of job, school and personal life. I also paid for my school like you, not being entitled to free bees because the government said I make too much. Only when I got into Phi Beta Kappa did they look at me for a grant and/or any money.

On the other hand, I have seen a great amount of lackluster employees and co-workers in my time. I was taught to be on time, motivated, result oriented, and to work autonomously if need be. Deadlines are important; particularly today, as there are ten people standing behind you looking to fill your spot. The problem is, this behavior carries over into the service sector, as well as their personal lives. I don't know how many times recently that a meeting wasn't kept or the person I was to meet shows up forty five minutes late (if at all). I'm burning daylight and have other things to do. Many folks just don't have the sense of urgency to function in a competitive environment effectively.

One should approach their work as if their life depended upon it, because essentially it does. The " I showed up , you should be happy" attitude doesn't work for me when I'm paying the freight and I think if these folks expect more from others, they should expect more from themselves.

PS: Literature is wonderful, but math and science brings those ideas to life. We "make" stuff.

Do'ers and excuse makers.
Hang around any group of people for a year, you'll notice they can be roughly distributed into these two groups.

The do'ers always seem to make it on time. They never seem to have those flat tires, those great-aunt funerals, those pressing engagements elsewhere. They always seem to be the first ones there, the last ones to leave. When the freak occasion arises that they do need some sort of exception, it's a no-brainer since you know it's an outlying thing.

The excuse makers are never without a testy transmission, late because they were busy saving a roaming dog on the highway, or they're sick with the flu, the perpetual reasons why they cannot do whatever they've been tasked to do.

It pretty much boils down to how that person prioritizes their relationship with your class or you, the business that employs them. The excuse-makers don't realize that they're inadvertently cuing themselves for the first round of culls with every excuse they make. They're saying "this job (or this class) doesn't mean as much as whatever else I'm doing in my life"... and they wonder why they keep getting shitcanned.

I swear to god, I could handle any oddity or deficiency in my kid- he could be a retarded albino gay midget for all I care- so long as he isn't in the category of pathetic losers who are always late and who subsist on transparent excuses. That, I could not and would not accept. Comes as no surprise whatsoever to see someone like AJMarcil voicing his support for that methodology.

Most of the time I agree with what you say. however its all too evident that at no time in your life were you lacking in funds and had to pull your own [filtered word] out of a hole ! That's fine, but most of the rest of us have always needed 2 thousand more than what we have at any given time, and there is not anyone out there handing it out for any amount of work you are willing to do.